San Francisco-based Hyperledger, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology, recently announced eight new members have joined the project to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications. Change Healthcare has come aboard as a Premier Member of the project and the company's CTO Aaron Symanski has been tapped to join the Hyperledger Governing Board.

"Blockchain is a promising and exciting new technology for secure online transactions," said Aaron Symanski, CTO, Change Healthcare. "But it's crucial that healthcare leaders step up to champion innovation to help take blockchain from its early implementations to tomorrow's healthcare IT solutions. I look forward to collaborating with Hyperledger members to help develop an open, distributed ledger technology that makes secure and safe financial interoperability work better in healthcare and beyond."

Nashville blockchain startup Hashed Health is already a member of Hyperledger.